TIRANA, Albania — Albanian novelist and poet Ismail Kadare, whose irreverent works from communist Albania won him international fame and oppression by the country’s dictatorship, has died in Tirana, his editor said on Monday. He was 88.
Kadare has won a number of international prizes and has long been mentioned as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Albanian President Bajram Begaj praised Kadare as the country’s “spiritual emancipator.”
“Albania and the Albanians lost their genius in the field of letters… the Balkans (lost) the poet of its myths, Europe and the world (lost) one of the most renowned representatives of modern literature,” Begaj said in a statement from his office. .
The Albanian government has declared two days of national mourning on Tuesday and Wednesday, with flags flying at half-mast. A minute’s silence will be observed nationwide on Wednesday after Kadare’s funeral.
Onufri Publishing House editor Bujar Hudhri said the author died on Monday morning after being rushed to a hospital.
A nurse at the hospital said he was taken to the emergency room after going into cardiac arrest. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.
Kadare became internationally recognized after his novel ‘The General of the Dead Army’ – which later inspired a film starring Marcello Mastroianni and Anouk Aimee – was published in 1963. The book told the story of an Italian general sent to Albania to repatriate the bones of thousands of his countrymen who died there during World War II, and who reflected on the futility of the task and of the war.
At the time, Albania was still ruled by the communist government of the late dictator Enver Hoxha, who had turned the small, mountainous Balkan country into the most isolated country in Europe.
Celebrated for the delicate writing of his novels, Kadare fled to France in the autumn of 1990, just a few months before the collapse of the communist regime following the student protests in December. He lived in Paris and had recently returned to Tirana, the Albanian capital.
During a visit to Albania last year, French President Emmanuel Macron awarded him the title Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. France had also previously appointed him a foreign associate of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, as well as commander of the Legion of Honor.
Kadare has received a number of international prizes, including the first International Booker Prize in 2005. His works, including more than 80 novels, plays, screenplays, poetry, essays and short story collections, have been translated into 45 languages.
Born on January 28, 1936 in the southern Albanian city of Gjirokaster, Kadare graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana and went on to study at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow.
But he was recalled after Hoxha split from the Soviet Union – the first of two major breaks with major communist powers that would later end with China.
Back in Albania, Kadare gained a reputation as a poet and novelist, but soon had to contend with the communist regime, which banned several of his works and briefly exiled him to the provinces.
‘The General of the Dead Army’ attracted widespread international attention when it was translated into French and published in the West. This recognition abroad is credited with protecting Kadare from the more violent retaliation that Albanian communists routinely reserve for dissidents.
After the fall of communism in Albania, Kadare resisted calls from various political parties and politicians to become president of the country.
He is survived by his wife Helena, also a writer, and his daughters Gresa and Besiana.
The funeral will take place on Wednesday.
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Semini reported from Bari, Italy.
